violetcheetah | Memoir section 18: "Deep Water" (Reply)

I turned 25 in May. I hadn't expected it to ever happen. Even as a child, I never really thought I'd live to the next milestone. I always made plans as if I would, but as far back as choosing a bookbag and sneakers for first grade, I knew in my soul that I would cease to exist before the first day of class. I didn't worry about starting middle school, or high school, because the day would never come for me. I kept walking forward toward it, sleepwalking like Sleeping Beauty to the spindle, because I was moving toward not the goal, but oblivion. Each time, of course, I awakened when time pricked my finger, not knowing — or at least not believing — where I was, thinking, "Crap, what do I do next?" Now I woke up the day after my 25th birthday, and I thought with awe, "I might live to be old."

I called the YMCA and signed up for swimming lessons. I'd wanted to learn since I was four and saw the Romper Room episode with the kids in the wading pool leaning down to put their faces in the water and blow bubbles. I'd tried it myself, but I always inhaled, a perverse instinct I couldn't conquer. I tried for years, 21 years now, but I couldn't even splash my face with water without it going up my nose. I took baths instead of showers because I felt like I was drowning when I rinsed the shampoo out of my hair. I got the soap off my face with a washcloth. I didn't really believe the Y could teach me, but then, I hadn't believed I'd live to age 25.

The teacher had no answer for me, other than to keep putting my face in the water. "Take a deep breath, and blow it out as slowly as you can." But if I didn't shove the breath out like the wolf blowing the pig's house down, the pressure wasn't enough to keep me from sucking in water. I tried to stretch out the time, and sometimes I convinced myself that I'd gone from a second to a second and a half, but after four weeks of lessons plus working solo, I couldn't kid myself.

There are ways to stay afloat without your head going under — a quasi-breaststroke, treading water — but there didn't seem to be a way to learn to do them without dunking my head while I was learning. I was in tears by the end of most lessons, but at least no one could tell with the goggles on. "It will happen," the teacher assured me. But some people take months.

I stayed in the pool after the fifth lesson was over, my eyes stinging with tears, my nose stinging with the water I'd breathed in over the last hour. It was no different than any other day at the pool. I kept trying mainly so I could say I tried, so I wouldn't have to be ashamed of quitting. I sucked in a breath, started breathing out as I shoved my face into the water, tried to get my face clear before I started breathing in, repeated. It became a burbly yoga mantra, hypnotic, just something I was doing, no thought, not directed at a goal. I took another breath and mindlessly shoved my face back in the water.

I was looking at the bottom of the pool, the tiles wavering in the slight current. It was completely new, and I couldn't figure out what was happening. My face was in the water. But I wasn't breathing out. And I wasn't breathing in. My lungs were still, the water still enough I could see the floor.

I stood upright again and panted for a few seconds. How long had I been like that? "Well. That was a fluke." I said it out loud. Then I took another breath and lowered my head. Again beneath me were my undulating toes.

I still had to learn how to let a breath out in the water, which took a week, before I could begin to learn the crawl stroke, or the breast stroke. I couldn't figure out treading water, but now I could bob for half an hour, more if I had to, breathing in when my head was above water, holding the air as I descended, letting it out slowly and deliberately on ascent, over and over, my new water mantra.

I went to Walden Pond two or three times a week, with different friends. All I could do was go out shoulder-deep and do four crawl strokes to shore, or about three breaststrokes. But I could also float facedown for half a minute, listen to the liquid laughter and shrieks of splashing children. The water was murky, but I could see the bottom, make out the rocks. Some stood out, paler than the mud, and I started "bobbing for boulders," fighting against my buoyancy to reach them, then carrying them to new locations, forming rings on the floor.

I stayed in shallow water, of course, but I had to get neck-deep to practice the pre-treading bobbing. I had been playing at that for five minutes one afternoon when I decided it was time to move on to some other type of play. I went to stand up, but when my feet touched the bottom, my head was under water.

I had an eternal flash of panic, living the nightmare I'd had hundreds of times either awake or asleep. And then I was still, mind and body. I was not drowning, not breathing in, not about out of breath. I must have just drifted backwards while bobbing, only a few feet. I could crawl-stroke that distance, and more. My arms still wanted to flail wildly, the muscles shivering with the urge to move, but I still barely held their reins.

I let my legs drift up behind me, started my awkward scissor kick, arced my left arm languidly out of the water and back in, my cupped hand making no sound on reentry. Then the right arm, the left, the right. I brought my legs down, my lungs just starting to burn, found the floor with my toes, and felt the breeze on my face. I thought at first I was shaking from fear; it took a couple of minutes to realize it was triumph.